Brian Blessed had just finished his reading at a charity carol service in London last Thursday, when he tripped and fell. Shocked audience members rushed to help, but it turned out that the 83-year-old actor had suffered only a grazed knee. Worse damage had been done to the sacred atmosphere, which still echoed from the loudest voice in showbusiness yelling “Fuck!” into the interior of St Giles-in-the-Fields.
This sort of swearing isn’t very Christmassy behaviour, but is it actually unchristian? While grazing his knee, Blessed did have the presence of mind not to “take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”, as prohibited by the second commandment. In the Sermon on the Mount, on the other hand, Jesus says: “Anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” It is hard not to feel that Blessed went a little further than that.
Sadly, the Bible does not include an alphabetised list of all the worst swearwords and their associated punishments. But on the basis of what the Bible does say, is it wrong to shout “fuck” in a crowded church? “Yes, I think it is,” says Ian Paul, a theologian and minister at St Nic’s, Nottingham. “It’s a moral transgression because it exhibits a lack of self-control.”
For reference, Paul points to Galatians 5:22, in which St Paul extols the “self-control” of the spirit in its battle against the fleshly urges, which otherwise lead towards “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like”. As far as we know, Blessed has always shown exemplary self-control in most of these areas, but perhaps “fits of rage” needs work.
Paul also says that even secular swearing is wrong “because it is rooted in a structure of behaviour of wanting to undermine social mores, and it will cause some people offence”. In this respect, Blessed looks guilty as charged. Although swearing in private, or quietly, if he can manage that, might be less serious. “I must admit, if I bang my head and I use the s-word, it is always on my own,” says Paul.
